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Humbalala!

The other day I laughed out loud when I saw this threadless shirt over on my friend Jenn's
blog. Buddy would be beside himself to have a shirt like that, but his mom's a meany so no butt shirt for him. He's at the age where he loves to say things for the pure
shock value of it and "butt" is definitely one of his current favorites
(and thankfully the most shocking thing he can think of).

Anyway, when I saw the shirt I had to do a little watercolor of Buddy and his favorite word. If you grew up in Hawaii you're probably familiar with the term hana
okolele. I think it's actually pidgin and not Hawaiian, but it's something kids say that basically means, "you are in BIG trouble!"

Buddy says, "humbalala" or "humbalala ukulele" instead of hana okolele and I'm not sure if he heard it from someone wrong or the phrase has just evolved over the years. Another version that I even still use is "halaa!" which I think is based on hana okolele because it's usage is the same.

My brother's used to love to trick me into saying all kinds of bad words just so they could scream "hana okolele!" at me in unison and get me in trouble. Lucky me! I can't seem to think of an equivalent phrase in English or Japanese, do you know of something similar in another language?

(PS In case you're wondering, "hana okolele" is pronounced ha like "haha!", na like "nananana hey hey hey goodbye", o like "oh!", ko like "cocoa" and lele like "lei" and I've probably broken every grammatical rule for the proper use of quotation marks.)

Comments

Here in New Zealand kids say something that is very hard to type - basically just "UM UM UM UM um um um um" but with a very specific descending sequence of pitch and volume. I think it's a childhood skill, as I just tried quietly to myself and I can't do it quite right anymore :)

:-D You just about brought tears of laughter to my eyes because I haven't said Halaaa in what...ages? Every now and then some form of pidgin slips my mouth and my husband catches it...only to repeat it out of the blue when I'm least expecting it. For instance, when I'm swearing at some rude italian driver. "No make l'dat," he says. LOL

That is too funny, my kids enjoy those words and use them in the most inappropriate times.
My son says,
"humbalala - cheekie baba!"
I have no idea where he got it from (must be all that great preschool classmate banter) but its now a staple phrase in our household. Of course, I use it whenever I can.

Isn't it funny how we somehow find a way to stick foreign words in with our english?! My family is mexican so we have lots of spanish words mixed in with our english. The picture is great, and it is so typical of little kids. Did you ever see Kindergarten Cop, where the kids are calling the other kid a poopoo head and a cacapoopoo head? KIDS! :) They make me laugh.

Oh my gosh! I haven't heard "halaaa" since my parents moved back from Hong Kong! You knew someone was goin' get it in the restaurant when some old lady started to say that to the grandkids.
You're right about "hana okolele", it is pidgin. It made it into the original Pidgin To Da Max.
Funny how you always got stink eye when those words came out of someone's mouth... but I nevah! (Hah! Not)
I love your blog, it makes me less homesick! :-D

The way I pronounce it, it sounds more like hana ukulele but maybe that's a Big Island thing like saying ice shave instead of shave ice? Or maybe not... Definitely means "you're in big trouble" and there's also a fair amount of "you totally got caught" as well.